Using Eggs To Make Meringue

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Anne Mooney. I'm a personal chef and a food writer. I write for Simply the Best magazine in DelRay Beach, Florida and I'm here today on behalf of Expert Village. And to round out our discussion of eggs, we need to address what to do with the egg whites that are left over after we've made all those wonderful egg yolk based sauces like Hollandaise and Bearnaise. Say we're gonna make an old-fashioned meringue. Now there's a lot of discussion about what kind of bowl to beat egg whites in. And Shirley Courier, who wrote a book called Cook Wise, the best there is, has said the volume of egg whites beaten in a copper bowl is about equal to the volume of egg whites beaten in a stainless steel bowl. However, that's the raw egg whites. However, after the egg whites are cooked, those egg whites beaten in the copper bowl seem to have much more volume and they stayed stayed high much longer than those beaten in glass or stainless steel. So we're going to use this copper bowl to beat our egg whites in. And a meringue is made of nothing but egg whites and sugar. That's it, and it's cooked at a very low temperature for a very long time until it just dries out. This kind of meringue is. So we have here, that's five egg whites and I'm gonna put one more in there just for good measure. And I'll be separating the egg with my hands which is really the easiest way to do it. So, the white goes in there through my fingers and the yolk stays in the palm of my hand and doesn't contaminate the egg whites. So we'll save that for another use. (You're gonna want to cut). As you can see, we've started the egg whites. We have a nice foam and into this foam, I'm going to put about a teaspoon of vinegar which will help the egg whites further congeal. And then we're gonna start beating again, and as peaks form, we're gonna add the sugar, about a teaspoon. Now you can see, thanks to the action of the vinegar, copper, and the sugar, we're starting to get nice, glossy peaks on these egg whites. I'll add, I put about half the sugar in there. This is six egg whites, three quarters of a cup of sugar, and a teaspoon full of vinegar. That's all that's in here. I will continue beating and adding the sugar, about a tablespoon at a time until the peaks are stiff and glossy. Now you can see how stiff and beautiful those egg whites are and we'll pour them into a prepared cake pan and cook them at about two hundred degrees until they completely dry out. It's best not to try this on a rainy day. It won't work. But if you have nice dry weather like we're having in Florida right now, it'll be beautiful."